NeedMoreTea

You are right of the unarguability of US manufacturing against Imperial Japan's, but that inevitability still doesn't eliminate the time recapturing territory that had Japanese presence. Their no surrender policy made island recaptures slow, brutal and ugly. Even with carrier provided air superiority.

Had they got to Hawaii, I imagine the experience would have been similar to all Japanese occupied territories -- famine, brutality, extensive forced labour and systemic murder. So long as the troops are fed, and enough comfort women can be found, nothing much else mattered...

No it wasn't keeping them contained, but it was an attempt to draw out the US carriers. Had the US lost Midway and Japan not got bogged down in the endless, unwinnable campaign in the Solomons that absorbed endless Japanese resources, Yamamoto's plan may have worked as his stepping stone to Hawaii. Only Midway and they probably couldn't have kept it... Had they got to Hawaii, I'm not sure Japan would have cared much about the atoll.

As it was, with help in the Solomons, Midway turned the war in the Pacific. Least that's how I understand it, though I've certainly read more of the war in Europe. :)

Strategically crucial in a Pacific that had seen most everything the Japan side of Midway fall. If Midway had fallen, New Guinea, Coral Sea and Fiji were next in line, putting Australia and New Zealand at risk. What you call minimal gain would, had Yamamoto's plan come off, have put over 60% of the Pacific under Imperial Japanese control.

US would have been fighting their way across the Pacific, island to island at a range that no longer permitted bombing the mainland of Japan. Which, as seen at the end of the war, was subject to colossal losses.

Remembering my UK childhood with enough snow to play in more than once just about every year, and my kid's experience of almost never seeing snow that settles, I'd say that graph is spot on. It correlates well with my memory, and with family photos.

Guy Fawkes night (Nov 5) was usually too early for snow, but nearly always a cold, frosty night, often clear that you wrapped up well for the firework display. You were usually glad to get back into the warm. A good few years in the last ten and it's been late summer or autumn weather. Barely worth a coat, let alone hat, gloves, scarf and extra layers.

I just think the neutrality, reduction in resource use and sustainability has to come first. Otherwise Jevons. Of course there can be intelligent overlap. I would hope that as nations move near to neutrality they must have put effort into a rethink of agriculture and forestry (and every other human activity).

Now they can re-plant locally appropriate species and create new forest that will eventually appear to be entirely natural ancient woodland or rain forest. Forest that's destined to be mainly left alone as carbon sequestration. Along with wood production that's sympathetic to the planet and sustainable.

Greening deserts feels, to me, like a "near neutrality" re-wilding project. Something we can think of adding in a push to carbon negative, to undo some of the damage done. Something to do after we have sustainable, renewable electricity everywhere network to desalinate and irrigate. Something that can be carefully seeded to take account of species and that appears and acts natural, and stays put as national park or reservation. Without destroying yet another wilderness.

Not as a green project slapped down as Deus ex machina solution in a world that's not yet moving to neutrality. That risks making it worse. In fact it will almost certainly make it worse as coal and oil is still permitted to keep on looking for new markets and uses.

> Kids who never drank coffee would grow up and never think about it, much less care

Which pretty much nails the problem. Us older folks remember that cold, snowy winters were normal, that there were orders of magnitude more insects such that frequent stops to clear windscreen, headlights or helmet visor were just normal. We remember mixed farms that husbanded the land rather than beat it into submission.

Those kid's normal is no insects, no snow, monoculture industrial farmland everywhere, signs of human interference in every remote corner of the globe. Most live in concreted cities where food comes from the shop, not the land. Everything is based on that "normality of childhood". They quite literally don't see the problem. Even seeing old photos and film footage doesn't convey... I wish I'd listened to more of my granddad's tales of shire horses and traction engines. I wish I could have seen through his eyes.

The environment and natural world has become a theme park to visit for a skiing holiday, safari or to farm to oblivion. To watch in the latest Attenborough. Only a few outdoorsy types understand it, even fewer what it used to be any more.

Most of us have no connection with the natural world. Every industry and activity has become unsustainable by injecting rampant consumerism and near limitless fossil fuel into the process. Ironic so many of us are starting to actually care about impact, as it reaches worst ever.

I really do think OP has it right saying we need the "appearance of immediate, severe-yet-not-deadly impacts on our day-to-day lives" before anything truly significant will happen.

States can make regulations, introduce carbon taxes, ban unsafe or unsustainable activity. When was the first international industry emissions reduction summit? How are they doing in comparison to the politicians? Exxon, Shell and BP knew all about the harm they did in the mid 20th century. So they buried it, briefed against it, greenwash us with irrelevant and insignificant adverts.

I indict the states, particularly the developed states, for not bringing forth regulation requiring environmental consideration, emissions reduction, sustainability with penalties encompassing delisting, huge fines and exec imprisonment. Companies are quite happy to drive everyone off a cliff for a little more gold. We've known that since the first days of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

When a house is on fire, worry about the new extension after the fire is out. Otherwise it's Jevons' paradox writ large. We're still destroying and emitting at ever faster rate. Effort should be going into circular sustainable economies, decarbonising, achieving carbon neutrality, assisting the developing world to carbon neutrality too.

Rather reinforces my point. Headline: "global forest loss over past 35 years has been more than offset by new forest growth"

Replacing the carbon storage of a single 100 metre mature rain forest meranti, and the diverse ecosystem below it by new growth requires how many square miles? It's a net loss for a century, perhaps more. Overall it's a colossal loss.

I note that article accounts for area covered only. No mention of the human activity, of the clear burning, size of trees, amount of other growth under the canopy etc.

Far too little, far too late.

It may have helped fix climate if we had stopped deforestation in 1992 after the first UN climate summit, used only sustainable wood from that moment on and cleared no mature forest for pasture or palm oil. Oh, and started migrating to zero carbon economies when it would have taken a percent or two reduction a year, rather than the throw ourselves off a reduction cliff required now. Thanks politicians!

Right now we're still clear cutting, legally and illegally, mature scruffy ancient forest that provides carbon store, and massive bio diversity. At the same time tree planting campaigns and forestry mainly create limited diversity, or no-diversity monocrop desert (forestry). Typically neat proof of human interference. How many tens of years growing or thousands of hectares planted to equate the mature wood and stored carbon lost around the world every day? How much biodiversity and how many species compared to mature, "nature hewn" forest? Global reforestation projects will destroy more ecosystems... What will be the unintended consequences of foresting deserts and the necessary human activity, irrigation, even desalination? How many more species will go as a consequence?

Now had we created no-development zones around forests, to allow them to expand naturally, in a world not deforesting at ever increasing rate...

They link to the actual legislation at the foot of the page, noting the relevant sections. GDPR is very readable, and pretty concise. They also link to two more in depth explorations of consent. Bear in mind the ICO are the UK's enforcement body, so are presenting an accurate picture of the law. To quote three relevant points from the linked page:

The GDPR is clearer that an indication of consent must be unambiguous and involve a clear affirmative action (an opt-in). It specifically bans pre-ticked opt-in boxes. It also requires distinct (‘granular’) consent options for distinct processing operations. Consent should be separate from other terms and conditions and should not generally be a precondition of signing up to a service.

The GDPR gives a specific right to withdraw consent. You need to tell people about their right to withdraw, and offer them easy ways to withdraw consent at any time.

If you make consent a precondition of a service, it is unlikely to be the most appropriate lawful basis.

So yes it's law, unless and until someone manages to appeal some interpretation of a point all the way up the chain.

Excellent, as that will prompt a reaction. First to push even more non technical folks to join most techies using no exceptions ad blocking. Second to provoke even more onerous regulations.

Except one of the aims of GDPR is to explicitly rule that out. Consent requires informed, positive opt-in. Not a dark-patterned default.

See ICO's guidance on consent: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...

Those awful galley kitchens were a feature of the move from proper two up, two down to the extra bit at the back -- the only way you can still get light into the back room is to make the projecting part narrow enough to still allow a window in the back room. So the now separate kitchen becomes a dysfunctionally small corridor with side facing window. In narrower fronted houses, these can seem so tight you wonder how people use the oven or fridge.

Well when the term was coined, the key was two full width rooms each floor. Get out into the industrial and poorer areas especially in the North, Scotland and Wales and there were some one up, one down back to back terraces. Most of those went in slum clearances, but some survive...

Sure, the indoor bathroom/toilet was added later as it was a Victorian era innovation, but the second room on the ground floor was generally a back kitchen/diner. So you'll find a great many with a later kitchen extension (frequently flat roofed, and incredibly poorly, or not insulated) that permit separating kitchen and dining room, often adding an upstairs indoor bathroom/toilet for the first time. When those extra rooms were there from new build they weren't called 2+2s -- though they were clearly two bed houses derived from them.

UK estate agent standard for describing housing is number of bedrooms. Apparently we're meant to figure everything else from "two bed", "five bed". What else is in there is often quite varied and ludicrously (fraudulently) creative in estate agent blurb. Thank heavens for the relatively recent expectation of a floorplan and regulation limiting estate agent creativity. Until the 1980s or 1990s you almost never got a floorplan unless buying new, or exceptionally upmarket. :)

The truth is in the article, but surprisingly well hidden. Most of it is misunderstanding mid Victorian housing, or at the very least the term, and talks about derivatives not 2+2s. The key point of a 2+2 is the rooms are the full width of the house.

The floorplan shown is not a typical UK Victorian two up, two down. It's a three up, three down, sometimes called by estate agents an extended two up, two down. Count the rooms, it's not difficult. It's clearly heavily influenced by the 2+2. :)

The only point he gets it right is in the caption under the photo further on down the article:

Note that the houses in the foreground are built along more generous lines than those at the back, with bow windows on both floors and an extra room built above the projecting ground-floor kitchen

Yes, three up, three down, or as the the aerial photo two up, two down, with attached kitchen/bathroom. More like the shown floorplan to allow an extra third room on each floor, one of which being the then new innovation of indoor bathroom/toilet.

A two up, two down has a feature that the rooms are the full width of the house: reception, with kitchen in back -- one of those two has the stairs within it, the second floor has two bedrooms and a "landing" that's often just the width of the stair treads and two doors at the top. The toilet is outside by the coal house, and the bath was tin, hung up in the kitchen when not used, often under the stairs. They have often gained a 20th century replan or rear extension to permit the indoor bathroom/toilet, and frequently larger or separate kitchen underneath -- though many have kitchen and bathroom in a single ground floor extension.

Nowt else is a two up, two down, they're relatives, derivatives. Many mid Victorian 2+2 terraces came with colossal garden plots - 150-300 foot long, giving loads of scope for later indoor bathrooms, kitchens, and garages -- sometimes double length at the far end.

Trickle down economics was coined in a depression era joke by Will Rogers.

You might want to start your reading with this very widely reported 2015 IMF report: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf

First article about this report search brought up, in case you want a slightly lighter introduction is, though you should find dozens of other media articles on the report: https://psmag.com/economics/trickle-down-economics-is-indeed... Never encountered this site before so know nothing of their editorial stance, though I can conclude they are not pushing the boundaries of the laissez-faire right. :)

You speak as though change moves in one direction, and that there is a mainly additive "correct" one. That speaks of the over-confidence of youth, sorry. I will try and answer as an enthusiastic reader of history rather than as of a particular generation as frankly, I see that as utterly irrelevant. Both your comments assign blame to boomers in a way that implies no other generation before or since has ever made an insulting denigration of those that follow. "Kid's these days" has probably been a universal comment of the parental generation of the kids, and "parents just don't get it" the comment of their kids since the stone age.

The only thing that marks boomers as different is the technological leverage available to them. Meaning each and every succeeding generation since the industrial revolution can do more good and vastly more harm, than the one that went before. WW1 was so much worse than the Napoleonic war as technological leverage brought industrial slaughter. Similar comments were heard in Dickens day, in pre-WW1 Edwardian era, and I have no doubt will continue to be heard in 30 when it'll be the ageing Millennials being denigrated, and 300 years, etc.

Just to put your "only divisive because boomers" issues into context, ALL of them were divisive in the eras they were restricted, except the pendulum was swinging the other way. There were moral panics and outrages over all these in Elizabethan, Victorian, Edwardian times and still today. So that's 400 years. You'll find similar going back to ancient Rome and Greece.

We are going through a pendulum swing of relaxing attitudes to all of these, and decline of regulation. Regulation declines due to the rise of the cargo cult of neoliberalism 1980 on, attitudes due to the rise of individual consumerism 1960 on. Give it fifty or a hundred years and there will be a "universal" clamour for greater restriction, perhaps with a new spin, perhaps in forms of regulation commonly tried across the millennia. Perhaps religion or abstinence will see a revival. Perhaps something completely new, whether environmentalism or something we can't yet conceive.

At some point in the swing to relaxed, low regulation, rebelling against parents will necessarily spawn a more community, collective, or restrictive reaction.

Recyclable is worse than reusable, both are worse than reducing use in the first place. Best option is giving a drink in a mug or cup. Customer can provide a takeaway container or bring their own mug. All behaviour needs to be adjusted -- individual, and corporate via regulation.

This whole expectation of disposability is the problem in the first place.

> paper bags cause more harm than plastic

Citation needed. As I understand it, they can be more harmful if unsustainable methods of production are used. Unbleached paper from sustainable forestry should be less harmful. It may not be cheaper. Cheapest should not be the only aim. c.f. regulation.

Are banning predatory practices and usurious rates of interest, restricting medicines, smoking and gambling etc elitism too? If so, I'm all in favour of it, even when I am the "victim" of said elitism, such as I was when I was a smoker. There need to be limits placed on abusive behaviour, whether individual or corporate. Still don't think it's elitism though.

Is it elitist if there's a real problem in stores that appeal most to the poor and disadvantaged? I don't know how they operate in the US, or the range carried, and the article doesn't expand too far, but...

If US dollar stores are anything like UK pound stores, they are vastly more expensive for food than the discount supermarkets -- Aldi, Lidl, Iceland and similar. They're OK to great value for many non-food things, like a cheap spare pair of reading glasses, notebook, pencils or USB cable etc. If there's a pound store it's fairly safe bet one of the above three supermarkets will have an outlet not too far away too.

Nearly all the food they sell is a custom, pound store only size, and the price per gram or litre is pathetic for anyone lacking funds. They trade on appearing to offer price advantage, perhaps 10p or 20p in the pound cheaper than the supermarket, by cutting 25 or 35% of the product. If you aren't comparing price/unit you're basically getting scammed by poundstores on all food and drink. Of course they appeal most to the section of society most uncomfortable with maths by seeming cheap, even if the truth is on the small print of the shelf label.

They positively drip with unhealthy only options. Miles of chocolate, cereal, milk shake, soft drinks, tinned beans. No veg, no rice, no pasta, pulses, low sugar soft drinks, milk itself.

Well I did say punish not merely fire. I would expect that to encompass imprisonment and fine, depending on severity. Ending or severely restricting the career and income should be the bonus, lower standard of proof consequence merely for the event happening whilst they're in charge. Separate from a court fine of 5 years salary, all bonuses and share options, or given 3 years in clink. :)

With adequate penalty and frequent enforcement, usual behaviour would change...

Both, but as a higher priority, c) punish the exec team on whose watch it happened.

Bring back the concept of responsibility. They are paid to be in overall responsibility for anything that happens under their remit.

Time was such a behaviour in the department, or under their leadership would have ended a career. Realising the actions of a lowly engineer or janitor can end their gravy train, they might implement adequate oversight.

I've been burned by both Namecheap and GoDaddy, along with losing a few domains in the infamous registerfly scam in the early or mid 00s. Namecheap may have been simple cock up, rather than systemic pattern of intentionally fucking over every customer. Avoid GoDaddy at all costs.

I consider GoDaddy to be one of the worst companies in existence, as bad as anyone else you can think of, as free of corruption as current ICANN and as fraudulent as registerfly. Clients looking at available domains have found them immediately registered and squatted at {hundreds}% markup. Their incompetence lost me a few domains, and several freelance clients reported similar -- all of whom were paying vastly over the odds for what they were getting. GoDaddy make Gandi look an exemplar of ideal behaviour for behaving as people are reporting in this HN post.

Their previous CEO had domain squatting and a complete lack of personal ethics as sidelines. That's quite apart from their horrific upsells making a simply renewal a 22 page nightmare of deeply dark patterned "no" clicks against atrocious value "offers".

Yet the Soviets kept on producing those prop powered Tupolev Tu95 Bears and others well into the 80s, and Putin started patrols and the intercept game up once again. Think they've now been repurposed as cruise missile launchers as well as bomber. So the Lightning kept flying into the 80s, then Phantoms and eventually Eurofighter Typhoons would be going to play with the Bear nearing airspace. The intercept role was expected to disappear, but hasn't. The newest intercept role is the surprisingly frequent post 9/11 intercepts of civilian airliners that go silent or otherwise raise suspicion. UK has Typhoons going supersonic over land every few months. So despite expectation, it never quite went away.

You're right about the brain drain, but it would have been nice to see Avro continue, and no doubt had they been building Arrows there would have been a more air superiority/longer range mark III -- they did already have mkIII plans, and ideas for even faster, after all -- as roles adapted. Above all, Avro Canada might still be in existence and competitive.

It's pretty well known in aviation circles in the UK. Three aircraft inevitably come up if any one, or simply idiotic cancellations are mentioned:

TSR2, P1154 (Supersonic Harrier), Avro Arrow.

I'm really pleased he chose to perform an offsite backup of the plans ordered destroyed...

It was all lead by the supermarkets, in the UK at least.

The two or three favourite varieties in the seventies and eighties have all disappeared. Not because customers no longer like them, but because the supermarkets wanted high yield, large size, taste free apples. More profit, and vast suppliers who'd supply a trillion tonnes at a time.

In the space of a decade the entire stock of trees for the UK's number one and two were grubbed up. The customers still wanted them, still asked for them, the supermarket response was "fuck you".

Now it's all Royal Gala, Golden Revolting^W Delicious, Pink Lady, Braeburn. All bland balls of taste free sugar.

Most of Europe aside from the UK, desperate for a UK-comes-off-worst trade deal, appear to have distanced themselves. Could envisage one of those being able to perform an investigation.

Also on some of the cars with EU daytime running lamps, they put the LEDs really low, where only fog lights were once permitted (fog lamps were illegal to use when not foggy), presumably firing up or entirely non directional. These are surprisingly good at dazzling, especially when roads are wet. There's a few makes doing this, but a couple of models are particularly problematic.

Language and meaning evolves. Dictionaries aren't prescriptive, they report how words are used. Electrocution is currently defined as killed or injured by electricity by both Websters and Oxford, so it's a meaning that's caught on both sides of the Atlantic.

So I think that ship has sailed, whether you like it or not.